Not a CT! Did the CIA create AIDS? A forum of eugenics?

[RKP5637]

This is not a CT. It is an article refuting CT.

I happened to come across this Snopes article as I was reading about eugenics. I've seen this supposition before ... so thought I would add clarity that per Snopes it is false. The article is interesting.

The claim is:

Apparently the CIA was testing to find a disease which would resist any cures known to man. They did this testing somewhere in Africa. The purpose of finding this incurable disease was to bring America back to the old days of the moral majority. Therefore this disease was to be transmitted sexually among the outcasts of society, namely people of color and gay men.

However, the Snopes article refutes this claim rather well.

http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/aids.asp

[Gidney N Cloyd]

1. On the other hand, there was the Tuskegee syphilis experiment

Best not to get too comfortable with what our government is and is not capable of.

In 1932, the Public Health Service, working with the Tuskegee Institute, began a study to record the natural history of syphilis in hopes of justifying treatment programs for blacks. It was called the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male".

The study initially involved 600 black men – 399 with syphilis, 201 who did not have the disease. The study was conducted without the benefit of patients' informed consent. Researchers told the men they were being treated for "bad blood," a local term referring to several ailments, including syphilis, anemia, and fatigue. In truth, they did not receive the proper treatment needed to cure their illness. In exchange for taking part in the study, the men received free medical exams, free meals, and burial insurance. Although originally projected to last 6 months, the study actually went on for 40 years. It has been called "arguably the most infamous biomedical research study in U.S. history."[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Public_Health_Service#Tuskegee_Study_of_Untreated_Syphilis_in_the_Black_Male

The part that bothers me most is the phrase "arguably the most infamous." (Emphasis mine)

[TheSarcastinator]

2. Understatement: "Best not to get too comfortable with what our government is and is not capable of."

Tuskeegee, MKULTRA, and the Guatemalan Syphilis horror are just the things we know about.

"Susan Reverby, a professor at Wellesley College in the US, uncovered the experiment while researching the Tuskegee syphilis study in which hundreds of African American men were left untreated for 40 years from the 1930s.

The Guatemalan study went further by deliberately infecting its subjects. Not only did it violate the hippocratic oath to do no harm but it echoed Nazi crimes exposed around the same time at the Nuremberg trials."


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/08/guatemala-victims-us-syphilis-study

On edit: I love that the defender's first reaction to all of this is always "Well, the Guatemalans helped!" as if that somehow makes our responsibility for this madness dissipate.

[RKP5637]

4. Point well taken, this was in the back of my mind as I was posting ... as always, problem is,

we are information limited at time of occurrence, generally. ... another is IMO many areas operate autonomously and transcend government administrations, congress, etc. I really doubt the reporting structure provides an absolute accounting of what occurs in the nooks and crannies. Then, there are many brilliant people in the world, sometimes I ponder what is going on in rogue labs, etc. ... and that's not being CT, I am not CT, but thinking about permutations and combinations, entropy, chaos and the potential for risk.

[struggle4progress]

3. The Revolutionary Communist Party was pushing this CIA-created-AIDS line 30 years ago

My roommates and I used to have one of their broadsheets, proclaiming that, on our apartment wall: my personal theory was that the RCP could be a CIA front and certainly was at least a gaggle of professional disruptors dedicated to convincing the public that US leftists were kooks

[RKP5637]

5. Yep! n/t